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"The Rosie O'Donnell Show": The daytime talk charmer...

May 16, 1997|By Steve Johnson, Tribune Television Critic.

"The Rosie O'Donnell Show": The daytime talk charmer celebrates its first anniversary by fudging the date of its first anniversary. The show actually started last June, but June comes after the "sweeps" rating period and therefore an honest one-year show would provide little financial windfall. Not that the show needs the cash: It has enjoyed phenomenal success, rising to second most popular, after "Oprah," among syndicated talk shows. The shindig, if you can call it that, is Friday (3 p.m., WMAQ-Ch. 5), and it features return visits from her three original guests: TV beefcake George Clooney, daytime-TV pound cake Susan Lucci and singer Toni Braxton, the siren responsible, in part, for breaking up the NBA's Dallas Mavericks. As any human would after a year of exposure, O'Donnell has revealed herself to have some tics that don't wear well: Her singing is enthusiastic and frequent, at best, and she carries some of her fixations to annoying extremes. But these are mostly minor hiccups. In addition to being able to lure the very biggest celebrities to daytime, she continues to get more interesting material from them than most of her peers do because she is so unabashedly a fan.